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Don't avoid workplace politics

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Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#111

Post by [deleted] »

galenmarchetti wrote: post #19
ndriscoll wrote: post #13

> Stop pretending you’re above politics. You’re not. Nobody is. The only question is whether you’ll get good at it or keep losing to people who already are. False. You do not lose if you do not play. You can offer your expertise/opinions and point out places where things could be improved, but at the end of the day, just treat work as someone paying for your time. If you've advised them on how to best make use of tha…

it depends on whether you want to live life with work-as-someone-paying-for-your-time or whether you want to live life as work-as-perfecting-and-delivering-on-craft you can have an attitude towards spending the short hours you have on this earth attempting to produce quality work that others appreciate and make their lives easier in some way, as opposed to writing those hours off as sold to someone else

[deleted]

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#112

Post by instagib »

black_puppydog wrote: post #72

Not that I disagree with the article, but I wish the title was clarified to office politics. I clicked hoping to find am argument to the engineering community at large to recognize the political aspects of our work. Although I guess the basic argument still applies.

Website and original unedited title: Stop Avoiding Politics

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#114

Post by [deleted] »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
rossdavidh wrote: post #24

"Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room.…

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and…

[deleted]

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#115

Post by timr »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
rossdavidh wrote: post #24

"Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room.…

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and…

> As usual HN comments are more on point than the article....I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company.

You're just naming legitimate stakeholders (the C-suite) and asserting that they're illegitimate.

I grant you that playing golf is a cartoonishly pathological [1] version of it, but yes, there are always people more powerful than you in the organization, and if they have an opinion on what you should be doing, then you can either try to convince them (i.e. politics), or you can give up. Not playing is not an option, and being obstinate is a good way to get fired.

So maybe a case of HN comments being "more on point than the article", but primarily in the way that it directly illustrates what the author is saying: engineers routinely bail out of the politics, to their own detriment.

(FWIW, all of the items in the parent comment's list are even less extreme, and more reasonable, than your own. For example, if you throw up your hands in disgust simply because your colleagues want to use a new tool, you're gonna have a bad career.)

[1] and likely apocryphal - there’s probably something going on that is more rational, and characterizing it as “picking the golf buddy” is a cope.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#116

Post by harperlee »

johnfn wrote: post #64
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and…

I feel that a lot of the times conversations around this topic end up with some anecdote like "well, playing politics doesn't actually work because I work at a dysfunctional company where decisions are made by morons". If you have a C-suite that makes decisions based on golf games, this advice is not for you. You have a different set of problems. You should absolutely address those problems. But that doesn't mean tha…

I'd add that in my experience, when you are close to the action, the cynic "golfing nepotism" take is usually missing a point of view that is far more rational; just far from the developer/architect that is dismissing the decision. Perhaps not technically optimal, or fair, or even legal - but even so, more akin to "I know this person delivered in the past, and the alternative is also good on paper" or "I really need to save my ass" (nobody got fired by choosing IBM) or "business-wise, this technical recommendation I don't really care for". Perhaps I'm optimistic but in general I don't really think (or want to believe) that people are quick to wage their careers on an acquaintance that is clearly selling something as part of their job, unless the stakes are really not so high from their point of view. Then again, open a newspaper :)

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#117

Post by whstl »

riedel wrote: post #58
daft_pink wrote: post #4

Should be titled Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics? It’s not a discussion of the toxic political environment we live in today.

I would say, toxic politics is also just the bad politics the OP is talking about. Basically by the definition of the OP, I think pretty much most populism qualifies as bad politics. Politics beyond the workplace can work very similar to the one within. I know people who did 'good politics' within their work context and were asked to actual enter local politics. IMHO this is the best case. While I guess we also need…

To me, "populism" in the workplace shows up as pitting two groups against each other for personal gain.

I've seen it way too many times, from the engineering side: isolating engineers so they don't see decisions, and then blaming them to external stakeholders when something fails.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#118

Post by bonoboTP »

wat10000 wrote: post #98
rossdavidh wrote: post #24

"Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room.…

And even if it was because the right people weren't in the room, that's still a leadership failure. Part of the job of those decision-makers is to get the right people into the room With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics. Everything this article describes as "good politics" is definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building re…

> but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer [...] Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done?

Certainly many would prefer to just enter flow state and work on their craft, work the wood with the chisel (=do the engineering work), etc. It is of course not a good strategy in reality, and it doesn't matter what people "want", but let's at least admit that plenty of people don't enjoy having to interact a lot. People-oriented vs thing-oriented.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#119

Post by Nition »

bartread wrote: post #54
languagehacker wrote: post #41

When Jeff Hodges gave a presentation of his "Notes on Distributed Systems for Youngbloods"[1] at Lookout Mobile Security back in like 2014 or 2015, he did this really interesting aside at the end that changed my perception of my job, and it was basically this. You don't get to avoid "politics" in software, because building is collaborative, and all collaboration is political. You'll only hurt yourself by avoiding lev…

I used to work for a software company that literally had "no politics" as part of its DNA. It was in the company handbook, it was in our values, people would say it when they talked about what it was like to work at the company. Hell, whilst I can't recall any specific instances, I guarantee that I said it and probably many times[0]. But, of course, it was never true. It might have felt true - certainly superficially…

Your Musashi quote reminds me of another relatively well-known quote from philosopher Eugene Gendlin:

"What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#120

Post by dwohnitmok »

garciasn wrote: post #108
circlefavshape wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail So it's always business folks' fault, and never the nerds' fault? My experience has been different (full disclosure - professional nerd for 30 years)

I appreciate you replying. My intent was never to place blame; instead, it was to point out that while the article's author suggests technical folks need to play the game better, I feel that it won't matter and getting the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride is more difficult than just being a solid political player.

The article's point is that "the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride" is indeed playing politics (or at least a subset thereof).
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